Brian Whitlark is the West region director of the USGA Green Section. We talked about total organic material testing of turfgrass soils. This is distinct from soil organic matter testing. Soil organic matter is measured on material that has already passed a 2 mm sieve and thus is no larger than a grain of sand. This sieving removes much of the thatch and mat and living plant material from the sample.

1. There's more about this, including definitions of various items related to this, in https://www.asianturfgrass.com/post/organic-matter-terminology-in-turfgrass-soils/
2. You can see how a soil sample is tested in this video from Brookside Labs https://youtu.be/PyL2bfdiBdE
3. Richard Forsyth from Royal Melbourne also spoke about something related to the shear strength that Brian and I discussed https://www.youtube.com/live/T-w6CQzGzKc?feature=share

• Read more about all kinds of turfgrass topics at https://www.asianturfgrass.com/
• See the ATC YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@asianturfgrass
• Find turfgrass information and decision-making tools at https://www.paceturf.org/
• See the PACE Turf YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/paceturf
• See the ATC newsletters at https://subscribepage.com/atc_newsletters
• Listen to the ATC Doublecut with Micah Woods podcast at https://atc-doublecut.transistor.fm/
• Listen to the ATC Office Hours podcast at https://atc-office-hours.transistor.fm/

More about ATC soil tests at https://www.asianturfgrass.com/project/soil-tests/